MICHEL MARTIN, BYLINE: Troy Andrews, better known as Trombone Shorty, is paying tribute to his hometown of New Orleans in a new album he’s releasing Friday. He was just 19 when Hurricane Katrina hit 20 years ago, but he was already a seasoned professional musician on tour with Lenny Kravitz.
TROMBONE SHORTY: I live on tour, but when I come back home, I want to be in New Orleans. You know, I want to be able to be with the people. I want to be able to eat red beans and rice on a Monday night.
MARTIN: He was expecting to spend a short break in the tour, enjoying home-cooked food and jamming with friends. Instead, he evacuated with other relatives and rented a place in Dallas. Because he was still on the road, it never became home. Home was and still is New Orleans, and that’s where we met up with him.
Well, thank you so much for welcoming us in. Would you tell us where we are?
TROMBONE SHORTY: We are in my studio in New Orleans. It’s called Buckjump Studio, which is a style of second-line dancings that we do here in the New Orleans and Treme neighborhood.
MARTIN: You’ve got your organ there. You got a bunch of keyboards there.
TROMBONE SHORTY: Yeah.
MARTIN: And what’s the neighborhood we’re in?
TROMBONE SHORTY: We’re in the Garden District, Uptown New Orleans.
MARTIN: This isn’t where you were born and raised?
TROMBONE SHORTY: No, no.
MARTIN: No, no.
TROMBONE SHORTY: I’m about 10 minutes away in the Treme neighborhood, the 6th Ward.
MARTIN: Well, thank you for having us, especially here on what is a really big week.
TROMBONE SHORTY: Yeah, yeah.
MARTIN: It’s a big week for the city, and it’s a big week for you.
TROMBONE SHORTY: Yeah.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
MARTIN: You have a new album coming out…
TROMBONE SHORTY: Yeah
MARTIN: …Which – was it because we were coming? Is that why you…
TROMBONE SHORTY: I put it out because you were coming.
MARTIN: (Laughter).
TROMBONE SHORTY: That’s right. Yeah. We actually did it here. I did it in between tours. I’m working with the New Breed Brass Band. Half of them are my cousins and nephews. So I’m…
MARTIN: Hence, New Breed.
TROMBONE SHORTY: Yeah, New Breed. I’m, like, a mentor a little bit, but we been working together for a long time.
MARTIN: This is the 20th anniversary of the hurricane. And I wondered, was that also on your mind?
TROMBONE SHORTY: Well, we just wanted to do music, and then it just happened to come out during this time. So it just means that much more because we’re celebrating the music that we thought that we would lose 20 years ago.
MARTIN: The Album, “Second Line Sunday,” it is really celebratory, and it feels so uplifted, you know?
TROMBONE SHORTY: Yeah. Well, you know, that’s what we do here in New Orleans. Even at the funerals, you know, we second-line, we dance inside the funeral home, we celebrate life. Even in our saddest moments, we’re very joyous people. So it’s very seldom that you will hear in our music – even if it’s a painful lyric – that we would be sad.
MARTIN: There was a cut called “Under The Bridge”…
(SOUNDBITE OF TROMBONE SHORTY SONG, “UNDER THE BRIDGE”)
MARTIN: And when I saw that on the track list, I thought, huh, I wonder what that’s going to be. And even that one…
TROMBONE SHORTY: Yeah.
MARTIN: …Is an uplift. But where do you put that sadness?
TROMBONE SHORTY: It comes out through the music, but in a dancing way. So if you’re listening to solos and stuff, you can hear some stories being told in our souls. Some notes may seem – we might bend them a certain way. That can be sad, but it’s still on top of this happiness. “Under The Bridge” – it’s not a sad song. For us, “Under The Bridge,” when we’re walking around the neighborhood for four hours all through the city. When we get to the overpass, that’s what we call, like, a hyper part because of the – that’s when you get everybody smooshed in together under the bridge, and we get really excited musically. And we play louder because of the echo. And when you see that moment under the bridge when people – and we do this thing where we have a bugle call like, (vocalizing) hey.
(SOUNDBITE OF TROMBONE SHORTY SONG, “UNDER THE BRIDGE”)
TROMBONE SHORTY: And it’s thousands of people jumping in the air just from us doing that call inside of the song, which we did at the end of the song. And you can hear us. We wanted to create that. So “Under The Bridge” to us is a moment of excitement because it creates this moment of all of us being close to one another.
MARTIN: You know some marching bands are going to be playing some of these cuts. You know that, right?
TROMBONE SHORTY: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
MARTIN: They just seem like they’re made for that. Like, the…
TROMBONE SHORTY: Yeah, yeah.
MARTIN: Is that – did you have that in mind in part?
TROMBONE SHORTY: No, no.
MARTIN: No?
TROMBONE SHORTY: I didn’t have it in mind. The album is just a celebration, like, if you listen to it, you can hear on the song “Line Em Up.” That’s the biggest moment of the second-line because that’s when everybody get to see the people that’s coming out, what type of outfits they’re coming out with, type of fans and shoes that they have. And then we go throughout the track, and you can hear how we coasting. And…
MARTIN: Yeah, yeah.
TROMBONE SHORTY: And we just put it together, and we have a track, “Tambourine And Fan,” which is dedicated to Jerome Smith.
(SOUNDBITE OF TROMBONE SHORTY SONG, “TAMBOURINE AND FAN”)
MARTIN: Oh, OK. Tell me why. I love that one. I love that one.
TROMBONE SHORTY: Yeah, Tambourine and Fan is a summer camp here that happens…
MARTIN: Oh, OK.
TROMBONE SHORTY: …At the Treme Center, and Jerome Smith is one of the Freedom Riders, and he taught the children every year about Black history, New Orleans history.
MARTIN: The Freedom Riders being – for people who don’t know – people who helped to integrate…
TROMBONE SHORTY: Yes.
MARTIN: …Our transportation systems, even though the law said they were supposed to be integrated…
TROMBONE SHORTY: Yeah.
MARTIN: …They weren’t…
TROMBONE SHORTY: Yeah.
MARTIN: …In practice. And so the Freedom Riders – at great risk to themselves…
TROMBONE SHORTY: Yeah.
MARTIN: …Rode these buses, and…
TROMBONE SHORTY: And went into the restaurants and sat there, yeah.
MARTIN: And sat there and…
TROMBONE SHORTY: And got beat and then…
MARTIN: Yeah.
TROMBONE SHORTY: …And different things. So we wanted to pay tribute to him because he was also a part of the revitalizing the brass band community here. Way before I was probably born, he was doing some things that – he started Super Sunday to get that together, where we celebrate the culture of the Black Masking Indians, the second-liners and the brass bands.
(SOUNDBITE OF TROMBONE SHORTY SONG, “TAMBOURINE AND FAN”)
TROMBONE SHORTY: When I made that song, it’s a slower tempo song ’cause I saw a video of him recently where he was still in second-line, and he’s like, 80-something years old. And I wanted to capture – make him move the way he was moving.
MARTIN: There was an homage to your mom.
TROMBONE SHORTY: Yes, yes.
MARTIN: Yeah.
TROMBONE SHORTY: My mom, Lois Andrews, she was born and raised into the music. She started one of the groups here, the Dumaine Gang. She was a member of the Money Wasters Social Aid and Pleasure Club. She put me in the music. I remember missing school to go play at a funeral for a toot (ph) in Montana, whoever it may be. She just was that much into the culture. So this is me returning back to the music that she put me in.
MARTIN: I didn’t realize you’ve taken us on a tour.
TROMBONE SHORTY: Yeah, yeah.
MARTIN: You’ve taken us on a tour through the whole album.
TROMBONE SHORTY: Yeah, yeah. That’s right.
MARTIN: That’s wonderful.
TROMBONE SHORTY: That’s right.
MARTIN: Troy Andrews, Trombone Shorty, thank you so much…
TROMBONE SHORTY: Thank you
MARTIN: …For speaking with us…
TROMBONE SHORTY: Yes, thank you.
MARTIN: …For visiting with us.
TROMBONE SHORTY: Thank you for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
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